Originally Posted by
Prism99
I find myself visually challenged by all those lines. What I have done in the past is simply place a piece of blue painter's tape on the bed of the machine running in front of the needle, then used a ruler and Sharpie to mark a straight line from the needle to the front of the machine. When sewing squares for HSTs, I would simply look at keeping the corner points on that line.
It's been so long since I used this, I forgot some important information. If you plan to get *2* HSTs of equal size from the squares, you need to mark 2 additional lines on the tape - one on each side of that center line, spaced a scant 1/4" from the middle line. This is because the middle line is your cutting line; you keep the point of the square aligned with one of the two additional lines so at the end you have 2 sewn lines and cut between them.
The single line works if you plan on getting only 1 HST from each pair of squares, but you end up with 2 smaller cut triangles as waste.
Hope this was more clear than mud!